JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Critics have called I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry “puerile”, “terminally confused”, “casually sexist, blithely racist and about as visually sophisticated as a parking-garage surveillance video”, “stupid and offensive/stupid and condescending”, “a four-alarm flaming piece of crap”, “as predictable as flies on cow patties”, and “an abysmal stab at comedy on every conceivable level”.

I really enjoyed it! Here’s the one positive review. Interesting how critics feel the need to unleash the full force of their superior taste on what is clearly a crass dumbass Adam Sandler vehicle. It’s like writing a doctoral dissertation on Happy Gilmore. Which I really enjoyed, too! And Billy Madison! And the one where Kathy Bates is his mom!

Incidentally, Steve Buscemi really was a fireman in Brooklyn, and screenplay credit goes to Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. As in Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways.

Tree of Smoke, the new novel by Denis Johnson, opens in the Philippines on the day John F. Kennedy was shot.

“Last night at 3:00 a.m. President Kennedy had been killed. Seaman Houston and the other two recruits slept while the first reports traveled around the world. There was one small nightspot on the island, a dilapidated club with big revolving fans in the ceiling and one bar and one pinball game; the two marines who ran the club had come by to wake them up and tell them what had happened to the President. The two marines sat with the three sailors on the bunks in the Quonset hut for transient enlisted men, watching the air conditioner drip water into a coffee can and drinking beer. The Armed Forces Network from Subic Bay stayed on through the night, broadcasting bulletins about the unfathomable murder. . .”

According to Butch, Johnson was in the think tank brought in to advise Francis Ford Coppola on the Apocalypse Now script when the shoot was in trouble. Another adviser was Jean-Pierre Gorin, Godard’s collaborator in his Maoist period.

A description of the Philippines: “The setting sun lowered from the clouds and struck up at them in such a way that suddenly the entire town throbbed with a scarlet light.” The central metaphor of the tree of smoke: “”And I will give portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and palm trees of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon come to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” (from the Book of Joel)

I have these two friends who love the movies, have worked in the movies, want to make movies, have been talking about making movies for years. They have all these brilliant concepts for the movies they plan to make, which for a host of reasons (economic, but mostly psychiatric) they haven’t gotten round to making. But they committed a crucial error. They told me, and I am implacable. Never tell me your fondest dreams, your secret ambitions, even the name of your crush, because I will hound you to go after them. I am relentless. Basically I won’t shut up, and you may feel like hiding from me, but who else will you talk to about your fondest dreams, your secret ambitions, your crush?

I have asked myself why I am this way, and come up with too many answers. My life is boring, so I live vicariously through my friends (sad/pakelamera). I was seriously pushed to achieve as a child, so now I push others (from the safety of my lifetime underachievement award). I regard life as a real-time writing laboratory, and I want to see how the story turns out. Maybe I just want my friends to be happy, even if it kills them. Maybe I just like eating paper.

So I bet my two friends that if they met the deadline for Cinemalaya applications last month, I would eat their synopses and post the video on YouTube. Well one of them actually submitted his application! True, we had to drag him kicking and screaming through heavy traffic on a rainy Friday evening to turn it in, but it was done. And I will make good on my threat and eat that synopsis on YouTube. I ate newspaper as a child (weird family ritual on the first day of school), so there’s your foreshadowing. Since I am not kidding, I have coerced (blackmailed) Jade Castro who wrote and directed Endo, best movie of Cinemalaya 2007 as far as we’re concerned, into directing the video. We shoot in October.

From the Sunday Times: “Left-handedness has reached record levels, with a more than threefold rise over the past century in the proportion of those using their left hand to write. A large-scale historical study of handwriting down the ages by academics at University College London (UCL) has found that the proportion of left-handers has gone up from 3% among those born more than 100 years ago to 11% today.”

What does this mean?

a) The apocalypse is nigh.
b) It’s a good time to open a store selling merchandise for left-handed people (wrenches, desks, etc) like Ned Flanders did in an old Simpsons episode.
c) There’s just too many people in the world.
d) You can expect to get your ass kicked more often on the tennis court by some lefty with a monster forehand.
e) “Wala lang.” That’s for my friend Danton, who gets bonkers when he asks his English class to speculate on the motives of a fictional character, and he gets this answer. “Really? Well your recitation grade for the day is…wala lang!”
f) Hey, there’s a party list. The Left.
You can train yourself to write with both hands, but you have to start early. I used to practice during class—not only do the hours zip by, but the look of concentration on your face is usually mistaken for “studiousness”. When you get bored you can do mirror-writing.

“Reading may be the most intimate of artistic practices: The work lives in the imagination in a direct, vital way. The author’s voice, his face and back story and style of shirt can only break the spell, get in the way.”

Do we really care what detergent J.D. Salinger uses, or whether Thomas Pynchon picks his nose all day? Scott Timberg in the L.A. Times: Reclusive writers leave their words at face value.

A friend reports that last week, at a dinner in her house, two ladies in their 60s nearly had a yelling match on the topic: Novak Djokovic: endearing or just annoying?

Djokovic with his crowd-pleasing antics was the sideshow at the US Open. The main show, as it has been for the last four years, was Roger Federer. Asad Raza has a thought-provoking piece at tennis.com on the workings of the Federer mind. “It’s not about the other guy, it’s about what you know you will summon from yourself at times of need.” It’s about mental economy. Conserve your strength. Identify the crucial moment. Strike.

Or as we say in my household, Be like a cat.

In which I drag you kicking and screaming to a French movie about a gangster who wants to be a pianist. Emotional Weather Report, today in the Philippine Star.

Still no sign of the original version with Harvey Keitel. As for The Beat That My Heart Skipped, ask your usual source, wink wink nudge nudge.

French wine is now available in cartons with straws. Sosyal! The straw is supposed to be “special” as it “recreates the sensation of tasting wine from a glass” (also known as “drinking”). Now you can go to that snooty cocktail party in the designer outfit you maxed out your credit card for, and suck wine from a tetra pak with a straw. It’ll be like drinking Chocolait at recess time (Is there still Chocolait?). You can toast your host with cardboard, then stand around marveling at the bouquet of the vintage. Remember to stick out your pinky while sucking!

On the other hand, no lipstick stains on glasses—in fact no glasses, and no bottles to smash on table and carve up someone’s face with.

Real life threatens to invade my parallel universe, so I’m off to the movies. I plan to see Rogue Assassin starring Jet Li and Jason Statham, which is probably awful, but since I’ve seen just about everything with Jason Statham in it (even Cellular, even Crank), I’m ready for the worst. Then Neil Jordan’s new movie The Brave One starring Jodie Foster. Thirty years ago she played the child prostitute rescued by a vigilante in Taxi Driver (and then, in real life, a freak decides to kill the president for her); now she is the vigilante. Interesting career full-circle.  My movie schedule means I will miss today’s big news event, so let me know what happens.

Favorite things written by Graham Greene:

1. The Quiet American. Political turmoil and a love triangle in 1950s Vietnam.
2. The Third Man screenplay. Friendship and betrayal in post-WWII Vienna.
3. The End of the Affair. Passion, jealousy, and Catholicism in the Blitz.
4. The Collected Short Stories. May We Borrow Your Husband, etc.
5. The Fallen Idol screenplay. Little boy thinks he saw beloved butler do it.
6. Loser Takes All. On his honeymoon, a guy figures out how to break the bank in Monte Carlo.
7. Our Man In Havana. Espionage and vacuum cleaners in Cuba.
8. The Comedians. Death and love in Haiti.

Hey, most of them were filmed. Here’s an interview with Greene from 1971.

Last Thursday I was at Shangri-la Mall and I used the pay washroom on the sixth floor. I took off my rings, washed my hands, and hurried back to my lunch appointment. I didn’t realize that I’d left the rings beside the sink until I was on my way home more than an hour later. The rings weren’t valuable or anything: one was a red-and-green glass ring that I bought for change in a market in Florence, the other was a tiger’s eye ring my friend got for me in Quiapo. I figured they were gone, I wasn’t despondent, but I decided to try calling the mall to see if anyone had turned them in. I got the information desk, which referred me to the security guard on the sixth floor. While I waited on the phone, the guard, Mr. Tabayoyong, went to the pay washroom and asked the attendant to check if the rings were still there. And they were! The rings were sent to the Lost and Found.

Saturday I went to Shangri-La to retrieve them. I asked the ground floor information desk where the Lost and Found was. The desk person said she would handle it, and she asked me to tell the story of the lost rings from beginning to end. Then she sent me to the fifth floor, where the guard on duty told me to tell the story of the lost rings from beginning to end. By this time I was tempted to embellish the tale with the histories of Sauron, the line of Isildur, and the land of Mordor where the shadows lie, but I guess they were just being thorough.

Finally the person in charge came out of the office with my rings, and I had to tell the story of the lost rings from beginning to end, and I always start blubbering when I get to Theoden’s last stand on the Pelennor Fields. But I finally got my rings back, precioussss.

Got a problem? Post it on www.coffeespark.com so other people can give their opinions/advice, and you can read their problems and give your opinions/advice, and maybe everyone will feel better, or at least find someone to argue with.

Fed shoes. Photo by Paul Zimmer from rogerfederer.com, originally uploaded by 160507.

US Open final: Federer defeats Djokovic, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-4. My prediction was the Fed in four sets tops, with the Djoker fainting from heat exhaustion or throwing up in the third. (Note: When doing a Federer impression, it’s probably not a good idea to do his victory moment. It’s like cursing yourself.) Djokovic had the Fed early in the match and could’ve been up two sets to love, but the  backhand and I think the nerve failed him. Roger was not his usual brilliant self, but he didn’t have to be.

I have a theory as to why the Fed hasn’t won the French: he doesn’t like getting the outfit dirty. He could wear brown at Roland Garros, but brown is so. . .brown. Good to have three players on the tour now, because it’s been the Federal and Naderer show for years. By the way, if you can’t stand Maria Sharapova, you can watch her in the replays sitting in the players’ box with Robert De Niro, shrieking for Novak (thus ensuring continued TV coverage despite early exit, but how cynical we are).

Incidentally, I much prefer Adidas. And New Balance, because I read the insignia sideways as “Z”.